


Not Meant For Paradise

by Aevintyr



Series: Not Meant For Paradise [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 18:09:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20247106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aevintyr/pseuds/Aevintyr
Summary: This is the medbay of the U.S.S. Enterprise, the most advanced medical facility in the entire Alpha Quadrant, and he, he is Dr Leonard McCoy, the best damn Chief Medical Officer in all of Starfleet, and yet, somehow, despite everything, Captain James Tiberius Kirk is dead.Missing scenes from Star Trek Into Darkness.





	Not Meant For Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been rewatching both the AOS movies and TOS and somehow, this happened. (Disclaimer: I’m not American, I don’t own Star Trek, you know the drill.) Title is a reference to Kirk’s “maybe we weren’t meant for paradise” in the TOS episode This Side of Paradise (I’m contemplating doing some TOS episode adaptations into AOS set after this fic, so there may or may not be more along these lines).

One minute he’s making jokes, arming missiles and helping take out the big bad guy, all with his _legendary_ hands; the next minute, someone taps him on the shoulder, “We, uh, we need you to log another death, Doctor.”

He knows.

“I’m so sorry, doc,” Scotty whispers.

Before he’s even turned around, he _knows_.

His hands work on autopilot as he unzips the body bag. All these worst-case scenarios he’s imagined, driving everyone up the wall but really only doing his job, all these people they’ve already lost while trying to save Earth by themselves _yet again_, all this time that he’s known that this day would come, sooner rather than later, and yet, nothing could have prepared him for this moment.

He wavers on his feet. Maybe the inertial dampeners are failing again? He walks away from the useless biobed, past Scotty and Carol, over to his desk, and drops heavily into his seat. He closes his eyes against the damp.

This is it, then.

This is _it_.

This is the medbay of the U.S.S. Enterprise, the most advanced medical facility in the entire Alpha Quadrant, and he, he is Dr Leonard McCoy, the best damn Chief Medical Officer in all of Starfleet, and yet, somehow, despite everything, Captain James Tiberius Kirk is dead.

Dead.

Jim is _dead_.

All this time to prepare, to wonder how he’d react, what he’d feel, and now, faced with the reality of things, Leonard finds that he feels … nothing.

Nothing at all.

#

That is when the tribble chirps.

#

  
  
Then it’s a mad rush to get Jim into the cryotube, get Khan, get Khan’s blood, and get the transfusion.

Jim’s vitals spring back to life. The pulse is weak but it’s there. It’s _there_. Thank _God_.

“McCoy to Starfleet Medical. Emergency transport from the Enterprise. Two to beam down.”

“Copy that, Doctor. Stand by for transport.”

“Tell no one,” he says to Spock, and the surrounding crew. “Jim’s alive. There’s severe radiation damage. That’s all Starfleet need to know. Do you _understand_ me?”

Spock raises an eyebrow. That fucking Vulcan better — “Yes, Doctor,” Spock says. “I understand perfectly. I will handle things up here. Go be with him, Leonard.”

The whirl of the transporter spares him from having to reply.

#

In the evening, a nurse tries to make him leave Jim’s side.

After that, no one tries again.

#

The first one to stop by is Scotty.

“It shoulda been me, the Captain, he just knocked me out and … I’m so sorry.”

Beneath Scotty’s rambling about regulations and reckless irresponsibility and _mandatory_ hazmat suits, the infusor’s low hum pumps tri-ox into Jim’s regenerating cells.

#

In the quiet hours, during the night, when the view from the windows of Starfleet Medical is almost, but not quite, as dark as the view from his quarters on the Enterprise, Leonard sits and watches Jim, or rather, Jim’s vitals, the steady pulse, the flow of oxygen, the blood pressure that is still a little on the low side, and he doesn’t think about love.

#

Uhura takes one quick look and asks, “How are you, Leonard?”

“Jim’s going to be fine.”

It’s not an answer except it is.

Maybe there’s something in his voice, or maybe it’s just the fact that he hasn’t shaved in days, but Uhura gets him a glass of water, makes him drink it and sits with him until he falls into a fitful sleep in his chair.

#

He knows what love is, anyway, he loved Jocelyn and look how that turned out, and at any rate that is no comparison to the way he ignored his better judgement, every code of conduct, medical or Starfleet or both, and the laws of nature herself because, when faced with a universe without Jim Kirk in it, he decided, _no_.

#

Chekov stands at the end of the biobed, visibly reeling with the realization that their Captain is only human and that humans _break_. Leonard would sympathize, if he had any energy left.

Sulu takes a long look at their Captain, then turns around and takes a long look at Leonard. “He, uh … he _is_ going to make it, right?”

Chekov flinches, but doesn’t look over, doesn’t comment, probably doesn’t even breathe.

“Yeah.” Leonard rolls his shoulders. Damn that hurts. He doesn’t want to ask, but Sulu is still staring at him, so he does, “What’s put doubt in your mind?”

“You look like you are grieving.”

  
  
#

  
  
Maybe _this_ is what love is, he thinks, maybe he didn’t know anything, before, but the sheer enormity of it threatens to drown and crush and suffocate him all at once, he’s always thought of love as some kind of healer but he knows better now, so he doesn’t think about it, he doesn’t think about anything, he just watches Jim’s vitals and then he thinks, maybe something else can be done about that blood pressure.

#

The last one to stop by is Spock.

Leonard wonders, briefly, whether he will ever forgive Spock for being there when he wasn’t. He wants to hate Spock, but finds that he can’t.

There is nothing left to say so they don’t.

Spock just stands half beside, half behind Leonard’s chair, and together, they watch over Jim Kirk.

  
  
#

  
  
“You wrote in your report that the experimental treatment you used on Kirk was the result of some research project you were undertaking abroad the Enterprise.”

“Yes, sir.”

Starfleet Surgeon General Dr Harris Eggleton stares at him from behind the massive desk. “That’s awfully convenient, wouldn’t you say, McCoy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How come you never mentioned this important research in any of your logs?”

“I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up yet. Sir.”

“Well, it’s hard to argue with your success, but you must know that you violated about half a dozen Starfleet regulations.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So, for the record, McCoy, once more, why did you choose to inject Kirk with an experimental serum?”

“He was …” _dead_. “He would have died. Sir.”

Eggleton regards him for another long moment, but maybe Leonard looks a fraction as terrible as he feels because Eggleton nods and says, “Thank you, Lieutenant Commander. That will be all.”

#

Jim wakes up.

Leonard finds himself at a loss for words, two weeks he’s been sitting here and never thought about what to say, so he resorts to his first, best defense (_don’t be so melodramatic, you were barely dead_) and if Jim only knew, then …

But Jim doesn’t know, not really, and hopefully never will.

Jim thanks Spock because of course, Leonard grumbles about Uhura and him having something to do with it, too. For the record, or something.

But all that’s on record is the lies.

  
  
#

The crew of the Enterprise, their ship, crowd into the room. Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, Sulu. Spock.

Jim is laughing.

The laugh may or may not sound forced to Leonard, but he can’t deal with this right now, he can’t deal with _anything_, so he slips out and locks himself into a storage room down the corridor and swallows three times in rapid succession because he’s not going to cry, not _now_, not when Jim is sitting up and talking and alive.

Except he is. Crying.

#

Now that Jim is awake and well, Leonard is under the strict orders from Eggleton to “go home immediately and don’t show your face here again until you’ve had a real shower, a real meal, and at least eight hours of real sleep.”

Or else.

All that despite the fact that he is apparently listed as Jim’s emergency contact, where normal people list their next-of-kin. What the hell is that about, anyway. Maybe that means his bedside manner is marginally preferable to Spock’s. What a comfort.

Leonard has his orders. And yet, he waits, until he’s sure that everyone else is gone, and sneaks back in. Jim’s probably asleep and that would be for the better, but he just needs to see for himself, one more time —

“Bones?” Jim’s eyelids flutter open and blink into the low lights. “That you?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh …” The sheets rustle as Jim sits up. Leonard comes closer to the bed despite himself. “Spock, the others, they told me … what you did.”

“Aw, that’s no big deal, really. Just didn’t want to deal with a new Captain on the Enterprise. You know how much I hate change, and all that.” Leonard chuckles weakly around the lump in his throat. “Anyway. It’s late, you should rest, I should go home and … yeah.”

He turns to leave, but Jim reaches out and catches his wrist and it’s a good thing no one’s measuring his vitals because his pulse shoots through the _roof_, right up into that atmosphere that had nearly killed them all, and the hateful vastness of space beyond.

“Bones,” Jim murmurs against his skin. “_Thank you_.”

It takes too long until Leonard prises Jim’s hand off his wrist and puts it, gently, on the bed. “You really do need to rest.”

Jim looks at him like something is breaking, or maybe that’s just the low lights.

Leonard flees.

#

He’s not sure whether he’s slept for eight hours or eight minutes. He feels like Jim looked last night. He feels like Jim —

Damnit.

Leonard sits up and rubs his hands over his face.

Shower first.

  
  
#

  
  
He spends the day going over the mission, Khan and Admiral Marcus and Section 31 and Jim’s thirst to avenge Christopher Pike, who is dead and would _stay_ dead.

Jim’s voice on the comm after he’d got his arm stuck in that torpedo, _Dr McCoy, are you alright?_ He almost forgot that he’d nearly died himself and Jim … Jim had sounded so _scared_.

All this death.

But then, what had Leonard expected when he’d joined the military? For all of Starfleet’s “humanitarian peacekeeping armada” propaganda, at the end of the day, it’s descended from Military Assault Command Operations, so it is the military, or it will be again, soon enough. War with the Klingons might still be on the cards, what with them killing that patrol on Qo’nos.

Leonard ran to Starfleet, into space, from his divorce. Where the hell is he supposed to run now?

  
  
#

  
  
He doesn’t return to Starfleet Medical until Jim calls for him.

“What do you want?” Leonard checks the vitals over, just in case. “You’re not dying.” Not again.

“No, I’m not. In fact, they’re releasing me tomorrow.” Jim grins. “I just wanted to see you, I guess. You know, the nurses said something interesting, they told me you were here pretty much non-stop while I was in that coma.”

Leonard is going to _kill_ them. He’s already broken his Oath by playing at God, so he might as well throw _do no harm_ out of the window while he’s at it.

“So,” he grumbles, “how many numbers did you get for when they release you tomorrow?”

“That’s not — Never mind. Sit down, Bones. You’re making me nervous.” Jim pats the edge of the biobed.

Leonard sits down.

“Bones …” Jim touches his thigh and all breath leaves him in a rush as he fights the impulse to run. “I am keeping the Enterprise. They’re sending us on that five year mission. It’s going to be alright.”

He huffs. “Yeah, sure.”

Jim’s eyes narrow. “What’s that supposed to mean? You’re coming with me, right? You’re my CMO.”

“Oh, I know.” Hysterical laughter bubbles up in his throat. “When you were busy sacrificing yourself, did you ever stop to think that it would be my duty to call your death?”

“Well, no, now that you mention it, not really, but … Look, I’m _sorry_ about that, but it’s not like I had a choice. If I hadn’t realigned the warp core, we would all be dead, would you have preferred that?”

If he’d been dead, too, at least he never would have had to face life without Jim, not even for a minute.

“Damnit, Bones, what is it? Where have you even _been_ the last couple of days? What the hell is your problem?”

Before thoughts of damage control can cross his mind, Leonard finds himself shouting, “You were _dead_, Jim! You were lying there in front of me and you were dead and I couldn’t save you!”

“But you did. You did save me.”

“That’s not —” He can feel tears welling up in his eyes. “I didn’t —” This is absurd. He should be the one comforting Jim. He’s not the one who died.

By the time Jim’s arms close around him, he’s already sobbing, so he forgives himself for clutching at Jim’s shirt and holding on to him, head against Jim’s chest, just to check, he tells himself, check that Jim’s heart is still beating, steady and strong and _alive_.

“It’s going to be alright, Bones.”

Jim is cradling his face and stroking a thumb across his wet cheek and then — Jim is kissing him.

For a stunned moment, all he can do is open his lips and kiss back, it’s instinct, it’s messy and violent and _good_. He feels his body come alive under those lips and the deathgrip on his shoulders, this feels _inevitable_, it feels right, it feels — _no_.

He wrenches his head away, puts his hands against Jim’s chest and shoves with all his might. Surprised, Jim slumps backwards into the cushions.

The sudden loss of body contact comes as a shock, but it’s quickly replaced by fury. This can not be happening. It _is_ not happening.

“Have you _lost your mind_?” Leonard jumps to his feet. Out of the corner of his eyes, he can see Jim’s pulse racing on the monitor. He mutes the alarm before a nurse comes running in. “Goddamnit! I’m telling you this once, both as your CMO and as your friend: we’re not doing this. _I’m_ not doing this. Not now, not ever.”

Jim looks … confused. And hurt. “But I thought—”

“No,” Leonard snaps. “You didn’t think. You _never_ think! So I’m gonna lay it out for you real simple: I will walk out of that door now and we will never talk about this again because it _never happened_.”

He turns on his heel and stalks out. The swishing door cuts off the, “Bones, I’m sor—”

Leonard allows himself one deep breath to regain a minimum of composure before he continues his way down the corridor.

The moment he’s out of the door of Startfleet Medical, he starts to run, and he doesn’t stop running until he reaches his quarters. The door has barely closed before he sinks back against it, out of breath and furious and … aroused.

Fuck.

  
  
#

  
  
Jim is released from Medical and vanishes straight into a debriefing marathon about Admiral Marcus and Qo’nos.

War is, apparently, averted.

  
  
#

  
  
He’s halfway through his fifth (or sixth) drink when Jim drops onto the barstool next to him.

It takes all of Leonard’s effort not to bolt. Just as well. He’s so drunk he’d only end up face-first on the floor.

“Hey, Bones. Is that a cocktail?”

“Mint julep,” he grumbles.

“What, not even an insult for the corn-fed philistine?” Leonard can hear the frown in those words. The awkward tension. “Are you, uhm, are you okay?”

“Just peachy.”

Peachy. Haha. Peaches. Georgia on his mind. Isn’t he hilarious. He downs the rest of his drink and slams the glass down on the counter. It doesn’t spring a crack, he notices with disproportionate disappointment.

“Bones, look at me. Please?”

For some reason unknown to himself and the gods above, he does. Jim’s gaze softens, wistful and hurt. Damnit.

“Are _we _okay?” Jim asks in a hushed whisper. “Because I really need us to be okay. Look, I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable, I just —”

“We’re okay. Now drop it.”

“No, hang on a minute, I can’t just drop this, how can you expect me to _drop_ this?”

“Do you want a list or something?”

“Well, yeah, maybe I do, because I sure as hell don’t understand.”

Leonard heaves a sigh that he intends to sound long-suffering, but it only comes out shaky. “Well, top of the list is the fact that you’re my _commanding officer_.”

Jim’s eyes narrow. “Bullshit.”

“Not really, _Captain_.”

“Yeah, I mean, okay, _Lieutenant Commander_, but that has nothing to do with … with this.”

“Oh yeah? And what is this, exactly?”

“You. Me. Me being in love with you.”

The world skids to a halt. Leonard forces himself to breathe before he hyperventilates. “I’m too drunk to deal with this right now.”

“Then let’s get you back to your quarters and find one of your magic hyposprays to sober you up.”

“That an order, _Captain_?”

“Damnit Bones, just come with me.”

  
  
#

  
They’re in his quarters, and Leonard is distressingly sober.

“You know, I read the reports before I went into debriefing.” Jim sprawls across the sofa. Leonard sits next to Jim because he can’t not. “The reports about what happened with me and the warp core. According to the medical report, signed by the CMO of the Enterprise personally, I … I wasn’t dead.”

“We all pretended that you were in a coma due to advanced radiation damage. Didn’t want to bother the Admiralty’s little brains with the details.”

“I read Spock’s report as well. Spock, he … he _lied_. Spock lied on an official report. For me.”

“Congratulations.”

Jim winces at the harsh tone. Shit, Leonard almost winces himself.

Unfortunately, Jim isn’t done talking yet. “You didn’t tell Starfleet what the serum really did or where you got it.”

“No, I didn’t, did I.” Unbelievable. Leonard straightens up and looks Jim dead in the eye. “Funny, are you really wondering why I didn’t want the people who include Section 31 and an Admiral conspiring to raise 300-years-old supersoliders and start a war with the Klingons and fire on _their own goddamn ships_ to have the power to play God?”

“Bones …”

“I did give them the formula to achieve cellular regeneration after advanced radiation damage. It’ll save lives. They even gave me a medal, did you read that in the report? Which is even funnier because if Starfleet knew what I’ve _actually_ done, they’d kick me out and take away my license to boot.”

Jim does a double take. “Your … your license was at stake?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, definitely, but that’s not the point here.”

“Not the point? Bones, you’re a _doctor_, of course that’s the point! Why did you do it?”

“You would have done the same. For anyone.”

“Well, maybe, yes, but _you_ wouldn’t. So why did you do it?”

Leonard exhales. “Do I really have to tell you?”

“Yes, damnit, you do. You brought me back from the _dead_. Why do you keep pushing me away now?”

“Because I’m scared!”

Jim’s eyes widen. “Of me?”

“No. Yes. By extension. Of the way you make me feel. Because, Jim …” His voice is breaking. Everything is breaking. “When you were lying dead in front of me, I just … I don’t want to feel like that ever again. I can’t take it.”

“I’m _right here_, Bones.”

“Yes, but for how much longer?”

“But you and me, we’re —”

“No! Don’t you dare! There’s an infinite and infinitely dangerous universe out there! The way you jump into danger head-first, the way you send people into danger when there’s no other choice, it makes you a fine Starfleet captain, but we’re going to _die _and I can’t even blame you or say that I would want to change that about you because you’re just … you’re _you_.” He gestures helplessly at empty space, as if that explained everything, and really, it kind of does.

“But I’m right here,” Jim runs a hand across Leonard’s arm, makes him lean back into the cushion. “I’m here, you’re here, and okay, one day we won’t be, next decade or next year or tomorrow, but Bones … whatever time we have … it’s just going to have to be enough.”

“It’s _never_ going to be enough time,” Leonard whispers.

“Yeah, okay, you’re right, it’s probably not.” Jim moves the hand upwards, across Leonard’s collarbone and throat, across his lips. “But why does that mean we get nothing? Don’t you want to have at least _something_? Anything at all?”

Leonard is caught in Jim’s gravitational pull, and if he’s making space metaphors, then the end of times must be even closer than he’s feared, because space might be infinite but human life is not, it’s _not_, but Jim is kissing him again and Leonard can’t pull away anymore, can’t deny it, because it will _end_, but not _yet_.

Not yet.

  
  
###


End file.
